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Is this the game for me? Serious help only please....
romanswinter
Member UncommonPosts: 74
Ok so I been reading these boards feverishly as well as other forums regarding Vanguard. I have come to understand that the game is riddled with bugs, runs terrible on mid grade PCs and isnt at all a polished product. All technical aspects aside, I am wondering if this is THE GAME i been looking for. And what am I looking for? Let me explain..
My first MMO was UO, was a fun game played for a little bit and had a good time. Nothing that knocked my socks off.
Then I went to EQ, and everything changed. To this day no MMO has captured me the way EQ did. Aside from the amazing RvR battles in DAOC, I have never experienced such emotions playing an MMO as I did during EQ. These are some of the memories if have of EQ that I still yearn to experience again in another game.
1) Running from Qeynos to Freeport. So many memories of things that happened on the way! The first time hearing that rumbling of the Giant nearby and thinking "OMG What the hell is tha.... omg its a f*ing giant!!" Getting attacked by griffons and running for your life. Dying and spawning in the gyspy camp, knowing full well that your not safe and a Griffon can come by any time and whoop you all over again! //// Going to high keep and running up the mountain for what seemed to take forever, and seeing the faces carved into the side of the mountain. I wondered to myself..."wow who would have done something like this?" ////
2) Trying to get to Unrest. going into the cauldron and realizing all the mobs were far above your level, and that unrest is somwhere around here. Learning the route and then getting in there felt so rewarding. Then as you think you own the place, you get into the basement and BAM!! Its a giant dwarf ghost!! And your like "HOLY CRAP ... RUN!!!" and you run up the stairs, out of the doors, ghouls are aggroing you and your yell "TRAIN!!!" and you see people fleeing for their lives!! Then comes the day when your strong enough and you and your friends go back down that and destroy him... and wow what an accomplishment!
3) Taking the boat to Erud. Getting on the boat from Qeynos and sitting there for what seemed to take forever. You sit and talk to new people and get to know them, suddenly on the horizon you see this strange white looking city. You get off and its just this incredible town with waterfalls and library and teleporters!! Never seen anything like it. Trying to get the warrens you have to cross that thick forest...and one day by chance you lose you way and find a Erudan fishing... you get closer and suddenly he turns on you and sends his pet after you. You cant believe it!! You start running like hell and he keeps life tapping you and your just looking to get away and finally you run back to the zone.... :huff huff huff: ok lets try that again...
4) Getting off at the docks in Frionia Vei. You see this newly build town and roam out a little bit. You see a giant waterfall and a huge crumbling statue of an Iksar! You know that this is a strange land. You get to LOIO and see the crumbling ruins of an empire and signs all around of war and devestation. You see sprawling wooden bridges connected land over valleys, undead roams the land looking for vengance.
5) Going into Crushbone, you get past the liegionares, and take out the throne room. You know that the Emperor is in the tower and you start to climb the stairs... BAMB! The assasin backstabs, the emperor aggros, Da Vin agrros .... your toast. OMG how am I going to get my corpse back!!!!!!!
6) Halas. Getting the quest from the tanner who wants me to collect bear pelts and she will reward me with a piece of armor. I collect the bear pelts and come back and get a RANDOM PIECE OF ARMOR!! How great is that? What ever happened to Random rewards? It was so much more exciting to possibly get something you need or different than what everbody else got. Also know you can trade that armor to someone else for something you need, or sell it for money. I did that quest over and over and over again!!
The list goes on and on, I am sure some of you all share some of these memories and others just like it. But since EQ no other MMO has given me these thrills, this kind of excitement. Does Vanguard do a good job recapturing that feeling?? Does it make efforts to introduce you to new things and surprises and challenges you never expected?? I can wait out the bugs and stability if this game can deliver on this level. I baught the game, its sitting on my desk unopened with the reciept next to it. Having read what I said... should I take it back and get my money, or should open it up in a month or so when the bugs are worked out and go fot it? Please honest answers would be much appreciated. No hater or fanboi rhetoric. Thank you.
- Roman
Comments
A lot of people were expecting Vanguard to bring back those old feelings from the EQ days. Many were dissapointed. I personally didn't get any of that old feeling, other than a brief inkling once during beta. Post release, no.
I understand what it is you're seeking, and I think a lot of people here where seeking that as well, and feel that that was what they were supposedly getting with Vanguard, but they didn't and that is a large part of why so many people hate it so strongly.
As for me, I believe you can only lose your virginity once. Those that persist in trying to recapture that old EQ magic are just setting themselves up to be disappointed over, and over again. You might catch a brief twinge, here and there, as I did, but in the long run, the awe that inspired those feelings isn't going to come back around again in most of our lifetimes.
Ah, reading tour post really takes me back. I am also a veteran of EQ. Ofcourse I got turned off by all the expansions. But that first feeling was just awsome. I thinnk im int he same boat as you are and have actually considered trying VG, I feel i have a good system but am not willing to upgrade just for VG. If there were a trial period that would be another story.
I have tried pretty much every MMORPG to date and have not found that feeling again. If you find it give me a hollar
What's realistic though is...there's a lot of travel in Vanguard, there's a lot of opportunity to run into higher level mobs that'll randomly lay you out, if that's your thing.
Open the box and roll the dice if you want, just mainly make sure you're fully educated on the performance issues. I noticed for instance, you said 'mid-range' systems don't perform well; high-end systems aren't exempt from problems either. There's people with 6 series GeForces claiming to have better performance than my 7950 GT after they tweaked their .ini files heavily. There's 8 series Geforce users opting to use their 7 series cards. So don't think of it as a matter of purely having better hardware for better performance.
Alternately, you could try and get a buddy key first. But don't simply hang on to that receipt for a month in hopes of receiving better word about Vanguard; things aren't going to be rectified before that receipt is devoid.
Exactly.
Well, rumors are circulating that EQ will open a new server on April 23rd. My friends and family and I are going to return to EQ if that happens and you are more than welcome to join us.
I know Everquest (particularly classic EQ to LUCLIN - know PoP well as well) and Vanguard is not Everquest.
I played EQ from the time it launched until the Ykesha expansion, and I understand the feelings you're talking about, because I remember them well. And those were all great memories. I had fun in EQ until I just couldn't play the game anymore, and quit. From my vantage point, Vanguard didn't give me those same feelings of wonder and excitement again, but something like that is entirely subjective. Some people swear by VG, calling it the best game they've played since EQ. Others have gone back to whatever games they were playing before VG.
Personally, I divide my time between City of Heroes/Villains and World of Warcraft, since I'm a much more casual gamer now than I was back in my EQ days. Vanguard didn't feel as alive, and as immersive as Norrath did to me, and the performance issues only added to my discontent. However, I'm not going to tell you not to play it. That's something you'd have to decide on your own.
I'm sorry for such a wishy-washy answer, but because the experience of playing Vanguard really does vary from person to person, it's hard to give a definitive answer.
Good luck!
Don't waste money on this game. I cancelled before I got charge for the first month. I'm playing LOTR online at the moment and it is SO much better. I have not encounted any bugs, laginess at all and there is no zoning. The graphics are great to boot. Just too bad we do not get to play the bad guys in LOTR. Anyways, I will be waiting for Warhammer.
As a final note, don't buy this game until you try it out.. It sucks!!
Its been a long time Since people were really neck-deep in EQ's hey day, back when Ultima was its competition (and only other choice). You have gotten older since then. Probably have more responsibility in your life and less time to actually sit and play the hard-core grinder style of mmorpg. while the amount of this truism will vary from person to person, it does illustrate why a Direct comparison isn't really possible, because all things are not equal.
I'm playing Vanguard with the wife. We're having fun, mostly because we get to play together. There is lots of things to do, everything has a depth to it beyond the chewing gum play that gmes like WoW and LotR will offer. But, do you have time for all of that? If now, then honestly games like LotRO might be more enjoyable to you overall, in that when you finish your play session you'll feel like you got something done. But if you acn afford the time, or do not mind only getting a bit done here and there, and wanna try to get back to some semblance of hte roots of the genre, then give Vanguard a try.
Personally, I miss the early days of UO. No classes, just skills, Open PvP, but serious gameplay consequences for being a PK'er. I doubt we'll ever get back to that again, sadly. But even if UO opens a 'classic' server, as some rumors have suggested, would that be the same to me now as it was back then?
Best of Luck in your Vanguard Experience! I hope it works for you.
Frank 'Spankybus' Mignone
www.spankybus.com
-3d Artist & Compositor
-Writer
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While Vanguard does remind me a lot of EQ1, it is a more watered out EQ1. Technical aspect aside, I think Vanguard is the closest match to EQ1 atm. While I also liked this in Vanguard initially, later on, I found it annoying because EQ1 does not reward much (in terms of fun) at low-mid level range. I stopped playing Vanguard the first time I went LFG without finding a group for 3 days in a row. You can solo in Vanguard (sort of) but its boring and unproductive. With bad LFG tools, small pop is really spread out way too thin in a huge world so its hard to find groups at times, even during rime time.
So yeah, you would like it for the positive aspect of EQ1 but you would hate it for the negative aspect too (hours of LFG, traveling for 30mins just to get to your group, etc).
Brad is like Bush during election campaign, his promises were sweet and all, but after he got elected, some of those promises will remain as a promise forever.
I am the type of player where I like to do everything and anything from time to time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor - pre-WW2 genocide.